Something Odd Brewing in the Land of Starbucks?
EmailWhat the heck is going on with the Washington State Republican Caucuses?
With 87.2 percent of returns reporting, the state GOP chairman Luke Esser called it a win for Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz..
But it was very close. Only 242 votes at that point, between McCain and Huckabee, according to Huckabee campaign chairman Ed Rollins, who seemed to think the GOP establishment was trying to sideline Huckabee.
“The Huckabee campaign is deeply disturbed by the obvious irregularities in the Washington State Republican precinct caucuses," Rollins said in a statement. "That is an outrage…more than one in eight Evergreen State Republicans have been disenfranchised by the actions of their own party."
Sunday morning, Esser said with 93% of the vote counted, showed that McCain had 25.4 percent to Mike Huckabee’s 23.8 percent.
“There’s no certainty in this mortal coil," Esser said, "But I am confident these numbers will hold up.”
Esser added that he doesn’t "blame anybody for strongly supporting their guy and Governor Huckabee is a great guy. If they’re mad at me, I’m sorry. But I would have done the exact same thing if Governor Huckabee had the same lead, and the same number of votes were outstanding.”
According to the Seattle Times, "Esser said he declared McCain the winner after calculating what Huckabee would have to win in the remaining precincts in order to take the lead. And even with being generous with a forecast of Huckabee votes, and purposefully assuming McCain’s support dropped significantly in the late counts, McCain still looked like the winner."
Fair or foul?
- jpt
UPDATE: ABC News’ Kevin "Chupkabee" Chupka writes that in Richmond, Va., just now, Huckabee said, "We were neck and neck within 200 votes in Washington state. Then something just amazing happened around 10:50 Saturday night:
"The party chairman, with 200 votes separating us and only 87 percent of the votes coming in — 13 percent not even yet counted — said, ‘Lets just quit counting the votes I’m just gonna personally declate John McCain the winner. Congratulations!’
"I thought, ‘Excuse me?’ I was even more emphatic than that. I have never heard of something so outrageous in my life . So were looking into every option that we might have and seeing exactly what’s going on but we want a full accounting that could lead a party chairman to suddenly preempt the votes and disenfranchise over 13 percent of the people, whose votes apparently aren’t worth enough to be counted.
"Folks, this is America and the last time I checked, you don’t have an elections so that a party chairman could preempt the people’s vote."
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Definitely foul. Every vote needs to be counted. Additionally, why was Mitt Romney’s name in as someone votes were being cast for? That is clearly tampering with the results. He dropped out. He should not have been a choice – period. These results need to be tossed out and redone with only the candidates that are still in the running.
Posted by: Jan Broucinek | February 11, 2008, 9:23 am 9:23 am
Oh, come on, cut that GOP local chairman some slack, people… For years he’s told to frame the vote, put up caging lists, depress turnout and voter numbers, and now all of a sudden he’s supposed to let a vote run until 100% of votes are counted?
He’s too used to lying & cheating now to differentiate people
Posted by: Kaj | February 11, 2008, 9:42 am 9:42 am
Jan,
Unfortunately, slick Mitt only suspended his campaign, he didn’t completely drop out. He can still raise money and collect delegates as far as i am aware.
Regardless, they should not have stopped counting. Also, the timing in which the results from Washington were coming in was odd. Sometimes there would be a 45 min to an hour gap between updates. I have not seen that in any other state.
No primary should be called until all the votes are in and counted. That should be a law instead of the stupid McCain-Feingold act which keeps people from donating more than $2,300 to a campaign but has no limits to organizations and allows rich candidates to put millions of their own money into the campaign.
Posted by: James | February 11, 2008, 9:45 am 9:45 am
How long have you been living in the US. Nobody has to reprint every ballot because someone drops out at the last minute. I would think that Republicans would watch the News, Rommey’s been out for over a week. Did you think “maybe the votes for Rommey show a dissatisfaction with both McCain & Huckabee? The same way that people voted for Huckabee when he had no chance against McCain & Rommey. I didn’t hear any of these complaints about Florida. Stop whinning! This is American Politics
Posted by: Karen Flagg | February 11, 2008, 9:49 am 9:49 am
“we the poeple” have been replaced by “we the corporate republican fat cats”…it is time for a jacksonian type revolution within the republican party and Governor Huckabee is the man to do it! COUNT THE VOTES- ALL OF THEM-(shouldn’t be THAT hard on the republican side with as few voters as we have coming out for the primaries.)
Posted by: timoteotk | February 11, 2008, 10:08 am 10:08 am
Stay on these Guys in latte-land, Jake. Please.
When the people are allowed a voice and given a clear choice, they go HUCK. Ain’t no mistake about it.
I have a hard time thinking McCain has anything to do with the vote suppression. MITTens on the hand, I can’t say so much. What’s he doing up there anyway. Wasn’t he supposed to just go away? Do us a favor MITTens, just go away.
COUNT every VOTE. Go HUCK Go.
Posted by: The Commander Guy | February 11, 2008, 10:15 am 10:15 am
Give me a break. “This is American Politics”. Just count the votes and declare the winner accordingly. None of the Republican field will have a snow ball’s chance in hell against Obama anyway. Unless of course Ron Paul starts getting his dues. The Washington race was a virtual three way split. All the votes should be counted period end.
Posted by: Tim Gandee | February 11, 2008, 10:16 am 10:16 am
Count all the votes. I attended my caucus, and after three hours, much of it standing in the cold weather, I was able to cast my vote. It’s outrageous to think that someone could do something so Un-American as to throw my vote aside and call the race without counting it.
Posted by: OneVoter | February 11, 2008, 10:40 am 10:40 am
I agree with Gov. Huck toatlly: count ALL the votes and then declare the winner. GOP State Chmn. Esser sounds like an absolute idiot!
Posted by: chuck | February 11, 2008, 10:49 am 10:49 am
Karen
MITTen’s gots the convictions of a cardboard box. A wet EMPTY cardboard box.
Posted by: The Commander Guy | February 11, 2008, 10:51 am 10:51 am
Mr. Tapper–Thank you for presenting this as a question to be looked into. So many reporters and media anchors have opinions all day long until there is an issue where opinion and investigation actually matter. Shouldn’t all reporters and news media look into this and report back to the people? Thank you for doing your job well. Hopefully we will receive some more info soon.
Posted by: Heather Brewer | February 11, 2008, 11:37 am 11:37 am
Hate to say it, but Huckabee is right on this one. It will be interesting to see what happens when the results are rechecked.
Posted by: Samantha Stickers | February 11, 2008, 11:58 am 11:58 am
Go, Huck, go!
Posted by: DKNY | February 11, 2008, 1:48 pm 1:48 pm
Fowl…and somebody better call it !
This what they mean by a machine. Once it is “runnung” It really takes a lot to shut it down even to reevaluate. This is a little scary. Do we really want to discourage all of those who thought their votes might count especially our youth!
This is not about a single candidate this is about being credible as a democracy. Hope somebody does make them fix… whoops bad word…”correct” this situation!
Posted by: cindy | February 11, 2008, 2:14 pm 2:14 pm
I live in Washington State and voted in the Democratic caucus. I was apalled at the lack of organization, utter confusion, etc., etc., and as I’ve stated elesewhere and directly to the Washington State Democratic Party, I have ZERO confidence that my vote was counted. What’s more, the voters in this state recently voted to have the primary election via balloting (which allows more people to vote) rather than caucuses, but the parties (and in particular the Democratic party) ignored the will of the people. What’s worse, this morning, we have Seattle Mayor Greg Nickels on the radio lauding what a wonderful democratic process the caucuses are. I’ve moved to this state recently and all I can say is these people must be spiking their Starbucks with something (not sure what it is, since I can’t afford to buy the stuff).
Posted by: rmb | February 11, 2008, 3:04 pm 3:04 pm
Here is the e-mail address for captain competence at the WA ST Republican party HQ:
luke@wsrp.org
Dood’s name is Chairman Luke Esser. Drop him a line and share some love.
This guy has to be the biggest fool I’ve seen in some time. And yes he’s an even bigger fool than Phony Phred not sure about Brownback however. Duncan Hunter gets big love though. He saw the light and endorsed Huck.
Posted by: The Commander Guy | February 11, 2008, 3:23 pm 3:23 pm
How can you not count the votes if there is a chance Huck can will? That makes no sense. I emailed that dood; i encourage others to give him a piece of your mind.
Posted by: dave | February 11, 2008, 5:01 pm 5:01 pm
People. Washington State Republicans did NOT elect presidential delegates. We elect them in late May. The infamous ‘results’…that are being quoted are from a non-binding unofficial straw poll of elected delegates to the county conventions. The math still holds up that McCain won the straw poll… but it doesnt matter. It is not actual delegates! Lighten up!
Posted by: Terry | February 11, 2008, 5:32 pm 5:32 pm
re:Terry’s comment
Lighten up?
Even if what you say is true, we must never “lighten up” about fairness at the polls.
Maybe civil rights workers should’ve lightened up about getting the vote for all americans during the 60′s since “it doesn’t matter.”
If this is the attitude in the U.S., then we might as well move to Cuba or Pakistan, where folks have really learned to take it easy with elections.
Posted by: Me Myself and I | February 11, 2008, 5:53 pm 5:53 pm
the deeper you look into this one the uglier it gets. talkingpointsmemo has been working it pretty heavily over the past couple of days, of special interest is a “humorous” article written by esser when he was in college about suppressing the vote.
the comments across the blogosphere by WSRP apologists claim that their caucus results are not tied to the candidate preference of the attendees, and their rules even plainly state this, and anyone that would question that clearly has a partisan agenda or just doesn’t understand their “system.” if all of that is true then, exactly what was it that they were “counting” in the first place, if not votes? and how then did a candidates name get attached to a specific number of what was “counted?” keep in mind that the WSRP web page clearly announced McCain the “winner” — okay, winner of what? the nod from Luke Esser and the party bosses?
Posted by: Mike in Seattle | February 12, 2008, 4:08 am 4:08 am
Looks like the FIX is in.
The Party Bosses appear to have “found” (haven’t we been through this before)more McCain votes and the old fellow’s lead has Magically jumped from 1.3% to 2.5% with 96% of the vote in.
Anyone tired of the elitist insiders, the party bosses, the corrupt lobbyists, the talking heads pulling all the strings behind closed doors?
Well if you are, you got a Choice. Go with Huck.
Posted by: The Commander Guy | February 12, 2008, 9:50 am 9:50 am
Jake Tapper IS ONE OF THE BEST. THANK GOD SOMEONE CAN STAND UP AND ASK HILLARY A QUESTION THAT CUTS THROUGH THE ABSURD CHARADE THAT WAS HER PRESS CONFERENCE. PLEASE KEEP IT UP
Posted by: Jon Reston | February 13, 2008, 12:06 pm 12:06 pm